The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler

Date

An Orange Note: Sweet Shop was painted in St Ives, Cornwall, between January and March 1884. ¹ On 4 January Whistler told Ernest George Brown (1851-1915) that he was 'tremendously busy with lots of pictures of all kinds.' ² He described his work to a collector, Alfred Chapman (1839-1917) as 'oil paintings - little beauties.' ³

An Orange Note: Sweet Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

This painting was exhibited on his return, in his one-man show of 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 38).

Whistler's output in St Ives included many small scale oil paintings, mostly seascapes, and only a few views of the town: Blue and Orange: Sweet Shop y263, A Grey Note: Village Street y265, and a watercolour, Penthouse of the public house in St Ives, Cornwall m0921.

Images

Subject

Titles

The known title varies only in grammar and punctuation:

• 'An orange note – Sweet Shop' (1884, Dowdeswell). ⁴
• Probably 'Note en orange: Boutique de bonbons' (1887, Petit). ⁵
• 'An Orange Note: Sweetshop' (1904, Christie's). ⁶
• 'Note orange; la boutique aux bonbons (An Orange Note. The Sweet Shop' (1905, Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Paris). ⁷
• 'An Orange Note: Sweet Shop' (1980, YMSM). ⁸

'An Orange Note: Sweet Shop' is the preferred title.

Description

An Orange Note: Sweet Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

A small shop, painted in horizontal format, in a two-storey building, with only the bottom of the upper window showing. The six-paned shop window at left has a slightly arched top. The bottom shelf is piled high with oranges, while glass bottles of sweets stand on the upper shelf. To right is an open doorway with a girl or woman holding a toddler. She wears a white apron, and the child, a white pinafore over a red dress. The woman is talking to a girl in a white dress and black hat standing on the pavement at far right. The walls are a dull cream and grey, the woodwork on the window is brown, the cobbled street, grey.

Site

St Ives, Cornwall. Whistler worked at St Ives, a fishing port in south-west England, with Mortimer Luddington Menpes (1860-1938) and Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942).

Comments

Whistler considered An Orange Note: Sweet Shop to be not only a fine work but very saleable: years later, in 1896, he wrote from Lyme Regis to David Croal Thomson (1855-1930):

'I shall have some lovely little pictures of the nature of "The little Sweet shop" - you remember - only if any thing finer in quality -

But what is the use - I dont want them to stay in England - therefore you could do nothing with them as I wish to sell no more pictures to Englishmen.' ⁹

Technique

Technique

An Orange Note: Sweet Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

Painted on a panel primed with pale grey paint. It is painted very carefully, in considerable detail, with soft, delicate brushstrokes, in thin paint.

Conservation History

According to Freer Gallery conservation files, the varnish was removed in 1921, it was cleaned and varnished in 1937 and resurfaced in 1938 and 1952-53. There is a lot of fine craquelure, which is particularly noticeable on the dark areas.

Frame

An Orange Note: Sweet Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

An Orange Note: Sweet Shop, frame

A replica Dowdeswell frame, American, made by W. Lewin, 2004. ¹⁰

History

Provenance

• 1884: bought by Wickham Flower (1835-1904) , London;
• 1904: sold at auction after Flower's death, Christie's, London, 17 December 1904 (lot 39), bought by Colnaghi, London art dealers, for £378;
• 1905, January 4: sold by Colnaghi's to Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), Detroit, with Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud y271, for £567;
• 1919: bequeathed by C.L. Freer to the Freer Gallery of Art.

Unsold paintings were returned to Whistler's studio after the first Dowdeswell exhibition in 1884. Subsequently Whistler wrote to Charles William Dowdeswell (1832-1915):

'Mr Flower has been here this morning and after fixing upon 'The Sweet Shop', 'The Sun Cloud', and the little Chelsea Embankment - I have forgotten the exact name - but you know the one I mean, [sketch] has gone away saying that he will now write to me and make me a formal proposal -

So send me by return the prices as they were in the catalogue - that I may know what I am about -

By the way I might have a few catalogues (as I have none whatever) - and one full priced one.' ¹¹

The three paintings were An Orange Note: Sweet Shop, Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud y271 and Harmony in Brown and Gold: Old Chelsea Church y305. Whistler suggested 205 guineas for the three, or £160 for the first two. ¹² On 15 August 1884 Flower made Whistler an offer, asking : 'Wd. £160 - - buy the 3 little pictures? … You will probably say quite impossible & in that case I must wait till your next little Exhibition.' ¹³

Whistler's response was to haggle:

'Perhaps we may manage an "arrangement" in business after all … you have made your proposition - and now behold here is mine -

The Catalogued price of each of the three little pictures is as follows:

(No. 38.) An orange note - The Sweet Shop - 200. gs (No. 52.)

Note in blue & opal - The Sun Cloud - 130 [gs] (No. 44.)

Harmony in brown & gold - Old Chelsea Church - 80 [gs]

[Total] 410. gs.

The £160. that you propose for these three is barely half the sum asked for the first two -

For 205 guineas - that is half the Catalogue price - you shall have the three! - or if you do not wish to spend more than you say let me keep my third little bit and take the two that you liked first, The Sweet Shop & The Sun Cloud.' ¹⁴

And as a result, Wickham Flower settled on An Orange Note: Sweet Shop and Note in Blue and Opal: The Sun Cloud y271.

A woodcut of An Orange Note: Sweet Shop was illustrated by Walter Dowdeswell (1858-1929) in an article on Whistler in the Art Journal in 1887. ¹⁵

Exhibitions

• 1884: 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 38) as 'An orange note – Sweet Shop'.
• 1887: Probably Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 206) as 'Note en orange: Boutique de bonbons'.
• 1905: Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 84) as 'Note orange; la boutique aux bonbons (An Orange Note. The Sweet Shop').

An Orange Note: Sweet Shop, Freer Gallery of Art

This painting was mentioned frequently in reviews of the 1884 exhibition, which were kept by Whistler in his press cutting albums. Walter Richard Sickert (1860-1942) in The Artist raved about it:

'Perhaps the most remarkable ... a simple subject - a doorway, a tiny shop window piled with oranges and cakes, a shelf full of bottles containing lollipops, and three little figures; but for tone and wonderful breadth of detail, which gives us the contents even of the bottles, this little gem can hold its own with canvases a hundred times its size, and will doubtless become historical, as one of the most beautiful, refined, and powerful creations by the author of the Peacock Room.' ¹⁶

In an unidentified review, a critic commented on a small panel, probably this: 'Some of the smallest productions, such as the little Chelsea shop, scarcely bigger than the hand, are really prodigies of finish, and as elaborate in detail as if they were from the hand of Meissonier.' Linking Whistler with the classicist painter Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891) is rather unusual! ¹⁷

The Graphic was enthusiastic: 'The "Sweet Shop," with a pile of oranges forming the key-note of colour, is an exquisite little work of its kind.' ¹⁸ The Globe displayed more modified rapture: 'the little "Sweet Shop" with a pile of oranges in the window' was among several 'admirable studies, most harmonious in tone, produced with little apparent labour, but conveying an impression of completeness.' ¹⁹ The Morning Post described it as 'excellent in tone and wonderfully clever in the suggestion of minute detail without extravagant elaboration'. ²⁰ And 'Cigarette' wrote appreciatively in The Topical Times: 'of the oils my fancy was struck with 38, "An Orange Note." It is only a "sweet shop," but there is both harmony and humour of a subtle sort in it.' ²¹ In a London newspaper, Frederick Wedmore (1844-1921) also described it favourably:

'a shop in Chelsea. The shop is probably the most perfect little thing of its kind that was ever wrought by an artist who has learnt to see. . . It is without detail, without apparent labour, without dramatic interest, but it is exquisite in colour, faultless in tone, and its well considered mystery has, at least, the interest of suggestiveness.' ²²

Wearing another hat, Wedmore wrote equally positively in the Academy (he still assumed that it was 'a Chelsea sweet-shop'):

'[W]hen Mr Whistler speaks it is because there is something fresh to be said; a new pretty thing has been seen, or a thing has been seen newly, and clamours to be recorded … perhaps it is only the bottles of pear-drops and bull's-eyes and the pile of oranges in the shadowed window of a Chelsea sweet-shop ... In any case it is fresh or freshly seen, and in almost every case it is set down engagingly. Of course Mr Whistler has not to do with what is called imagination; he has to do with the vivacious record of sometimes trivial fact. He perceives intently, and what he perceives he chronicles.' ²³

By the terms of C. L. Freer's bequest to the Freer Gallery of Art, the painting cannot be lent to another venue.

Bibliography

Catalogues Raisonnés

• Young, Andrew McLaren, Margaret F. MacDonald, Robin Spencer, and Hamish Miles, The Paintings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1980 (cat. no. 264), plate 162, as 'An Orange Note: Sweet Shop'.

Authored by Whistler

• None.

Catalogues 1855-1905

EXHIBITION:

• 'Notes' - 'Harmonies' - 'Nocturnes', Messrs Dowdeswell, London, 1884 (cat. no. 38) as 'An orange note Sweet Shop'.
• Probably Exposition Internationale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 1887 (cat. no. 206) as 'Note en orange: Boutique de bonbons'.
• Œuvres de James McNeill Whistler, Palais de l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 1905 (cat. no. 84) as 'Note orange; la boutique aux bonbons (An Orange Note. The Sweet Shop').

SALE:

• Christie's, London, 17 December 1904 (lot 39) 'An Orange Note: Sweetshop'.

Newspapers 1855-1905

• Anon., 'Mr. Whistler's Exhibition', London Evening Standard, London, 19 May 1884, p. 2.
• Anon., 'Mr. Whistler's Exhibition', The Globe, London, 20 May 1884, p. 6.
• Anon., 'Mr Whistler's Exhibition', The Graphic, London, 24 May 1884, p. 3.
• 'Messrs. Dowdeswell's Gallery', Morning Post, London, 24 May 1884, p. 5.
• Anon. ['Cigarette'], 'Whistles', The Topical Times, London, 24 May 1884.
• Anon., 'Art Notes', Liverpool Mercury, Liverpool, 3 July 1884, p. 6.

Journals 1855-1905

• ‘An Enthusiast’, [Sickert, W. R.], 'Mr Whistler and His Art', The Artist and Journal of Home Culture, vol. 5, 1 June 1884, pp. 199-201.
• Wedmore, Frederick, 'Mr Whistler's Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Gray', The Academy, 24 May 1884.
• Dowdeswell, Walter, 'Whistler', The Art Journal, new series, vol. 50, no. 586, April 1887, pp. 97-103, wood engraving repr. p. 97.
• Sickert, Walter Richard, 'Whistler To-day', The Fortnightly Review, vol. 57, new series, vol. 51, April 1892, pp. 543-47, at p. 545.
• 'Whistler Portfolio', The Studio, London, 1905, repr. pl. 1.

Monographs

• None.

Books on Whistler

• Cary, Elizabeth Luther, The Works of James McNeill Whistler: A Study, with a Tentative List of Artist’s Works, New York, 1907 (cat. no. 226), p. 193.
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler: Uneasy Pieces, New York, 2004, p. 391 n. 3.
• Duret, Théodore, Histoire de J. McN. Whistler et de son oeuvre, Paris, 1904, repr. p. 177.
• Glazer, Lee, Emily Jacobsen, Blyth McCarthy, and Katherine Roeder, Whistler in Watercolor. Lovely Little Games, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2019, p. 219, repr. p. 218.
• Lochnan, Katharine A., The Etchings of James McNeill Whistler, New Haven and London, 1984, p. 229.
• Menpes, Mortimer, Whistler as I Knew Him, London, 1904, repr. f.p. 128.
• Petri, Grischka, Arrangement in Business: The Art Markets and the Career of James McNeill Whistler, Hildesheim, 2011, pp. 377, 417, 675.
• Robins, Anna Gruetzner, A Fragile Modernism. Whistler and his Impressionist Followers, London and New Haven, 2007, pp. 2, 10, 23-25, 31, 36, repr. fig. 17.
• Sickert, Bernhard, Whistler, London and New York, 1908 (cat. no. 158).
• Spencer, Robin, Whistler, New York, 1990, pp. 110-11.
• Walker, John, James McNeill Whistler, New York, 1987, p. 102.

Books, General

• Robins, Anna Gruetzner (ed.), Walter Sickert: the Complete Writings on Art, Oxford, 2000, p. 5.

Catalogues 1906-Present

COLLECTION:

• Stubbs, Burns A., Paintings, Pastels, Drawings, Prints and Copper Plates by and attributed to American and European Artists, together with a List of Original Whistleriana in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1948, p. 14 (04.315).
• Curry, David Park, James McNeill Whistler at the Freer Gallery of Art, New York and London, 1984, p. 131, plate 35.

EXHIBITION:

• Selection of Art Objects from The Freer Collection, National Museum, Washington, DC, 1912 (cat. no. 6).
• Myers, Kenneth John, Mr. Whistler’s Gallery: Pictures at an 1884 Exhibition, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 2003, p. 91 (cat. no. 33) repr. p. 59.
• Merrill, Linda, et al., After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2003, p. 196, repr. fig. 105 (not in exhibition).

SALE:

• Christie's, London, 17 December 1904 (lot 39).

Journals 1906-Present

• Myers, Kenneth, 'Whistler and the Quintessencier: "Violet and Blue: Among the Rollers" and the Importance of the Late Small Oils', Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts, vol. 85, no. 1-4, 2011, p. 28-41, at p. 37.

Websites

• Freer Gallery of Art website at https://asia.si.edu/object/F1904.315a-c.

Unpublished

• Revillon, Joseph Whistler, Draft Catalogue Raisonné of the Paintings of J. McN. Whistler, [ca 1945-1955], Glasgow University Library (cat. no. 345).

Other

• None.